Praising Indian-American Nikki Haley with superlatives, the United States President Donald Trump said that the just-resigned US ambassador to the UN would make a lot of money in the private sector which she is resorting to. The 46-year-old Haley will continue in the position till the end of this year till a replacement is nominated and confirmed by the Senate.
“Nikki is going to be here until the end of the year. Nikki is our friend. She has been great. I want whoever it is to spend some time with Nikki before Nikki goes out and gets herself a job, and hopefully does — she’s going to make a lot of money. And I think Nikki will come back in some form too. But she’s an extraordinary person, good person,” Trump was quoted as saying in the White House on Wednesday.
Haley had confirmed that she should be on a break after more than 10 years in public life. Trump revealed that there are four-five names who could replace the Indian-American for the post. The one name that was spelt out by the US President was former deputy national security adviser to Trump, 45-year-old Dina Powell.
On Haley’s relinquishing the post just before the mid-term polls, the US President asked people not to read too much between the lines. “There’s no good time. I mean, there is be no good time. She told me about this a long time ago. And, frankly, it’s almost four weeks. So, it’s not that bad. No, I don’t think so at all. I thought it was very elegantly done,” he was quoted.
“If she waited until after, then they’d say, ‘Oh, she…’. You know, if we win, they’d say, why is she doing it. And if we lose, they’d say, oh, well, that’s obvious why she’s doing it. Okay? So there’s really no good time to do it,” Trump added.
Trump also said that he spoke to Haley some time back. “She and I had spoken at least six months ago. Maybe even a year ago, we had conversations. She wanted to be here for about two years. I think the point really was, last week at the United Nations, she wanted to get through that and then go, probably into the private sector for a while,” he said.
Haley is the first Indian-American to be in a cabinet-ranking position in any presidential administration who resigned on Tuesday. Trump accepted it straightaway.
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